As the twentieth century progressed, Australia
was increasingly influenced by the many aspects of American life and popular
culture which were promoted by the movies, radio, gramophone records and
magazines. For many Australians, Hollywood provided a glossy image of an
American way of life; jazz was the people’s music of the twentieth century,
and California was seen as a model for what Australia might one day become.
California and south-eastern Australia had certain similarities of climate,
topography and vegetation (the eucalypt being an Australian ‘export’ to
California). There was also a historical parallel: almost simultaneous
discoveries of gold in the mid- nineteenth century had boosted the
development of both regions.
During the first decade of the twentieth century a distinctive brand of
domestic architecture evolved in the suburbs of Los Angeles, especially in
Pasadena. The leading exponents of the style were the brothers Greene, and
their houses eloquently expressed the outdoors-oriented, relaxed lifestyle
favoured by Californians. Timber was used with an almost Japanese
expressiveness, together with ‘earthy’ materials such as rough clinker
bricks and smooth, water-worn river stones. Roofs were low- pitched with
spreading eaves; sleep-outs, pergolas and breezeways encouraged free
movement from indoors to outdoors. Elements of the Greenes’ sophisticated
style were taken up by other architects and by speculative builders. By the
outbreak of World War I the single-storey bungalow was the standard unit of
US West Coast suburbia.
At much the same time, the California Redwood Association was building an
exhibition house in the new Sydney suburb of Rosebery and some Australian
architects were designing their own interpretations of the California
Bungalow. By the early 192os, speculative builders had embraced the
Inter-War California Bungalow idiom, and it reigned supreme in the suburbs
until the Great Crash of 1929. During the 19205 the virtually standardised
Australian version of the style was usually built in brick rather than in
timber, and it featured a range of chunky carpentry details applied to
houses which in other respects were not greatly different from those of the
preceding decade.